


The Great Thunderbird and the Life Giver

by yoshiuwu



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Mild Blood, Minor Violence, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28794000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoshiuwu/pseuds/yoshiuwu
Summary: On the eve of destruction, a lonely creature finds life and love - as well as a message from someone gone on before him.
Relationships: Frank The Thunderbird & Newt Scamander, Newt Scamander & Newt Scamander's Magical Beasts
Kudos: 10





	The Great Thunderbird and the Life Giver

The great beast gave a sad, dejected shudder.

Or as much of one as he could give, given the limited space that the cage afforded him.

Despite the cramped nature of the wrought-iron bars, he was able, albeit with a great deal of exertion, to wrap his wings about himself; within the recesses of his mind, clouded with fear and uncertainty, he recalled his mother sheltering him in the warmth of her wings, a motion he now tried to feebly replicate in her absence. His mother had been one of the first they had taken away, and it had been the efforts of his siblings and himself to try and find her that had placed them into captivity.

He had seen his mother one more time since his imprisonment - in a cage just like his.

She'd been plucked of many of her feathers.

They shared a glimpse. Then, the Uprights that brought them here took her away. That was the last he ever saw of her.

Many of his siblings were beginning to share a similar fate. Cocking open an eye, the great Thunderbird peered out from the iron bars that bound him. The cave he was in was made of a similar kind of metal that he was bound in - or so it looked. The Uprights called it a. . . wayrhows—? . . .or something like that. It was dark; but the great sky-holes near the top of the ca— ah, . . .wayrhows— allowed the Great Thunderbird to look inside.

His mother often told him stories about the Great Thunderbird. He was the first Thunderbird ever created; and when the first desert grew dry, and all the Uprights and Upstarts - those with wings - were in danger of dying, he gave up his form to make the first great storm that a Thunderbird ever summoned. His feathers that fell to the ground were the beginning of the Thunderbirds, she said; but the Great Thunderbird was still alive, surrounded by the blue expanse of the Life Giver - the source from which the Great Thunderbird drew his storm-summoning ways, and his children in kind.

His mother always said that in a time of danger, the Great Thunderbird would send the Life Giver to help the Great Thunderbird's children. Glancing up at the Great Thunderbird - shining right through the sky-holes - surrounded by the blueness of the Life Giver, he wasn't so sure. The Great Thunderbird had not protected his mother, after all.

Nor had he protected his siblings, he realized, looking about in misery. He was the only one left; all the other cages were empty. A feather here and there; and the red water that was the fear of every Thunderbird across the desert. A tear slid from the eye of the great bird, and a low cry slid from his beak, scarred from the beatings of the Upstarts.

𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨.

The Thunderbird immediately halted his crying. The Upstarts had a tendency to beat him for the smallest of things; it was how he received the scar on his beak. Of all the injuries, even those that had hurt worse, it was the one he despised the most. Back home, playing among the cliffs and ridges with his siblings, he was always admired for how radiant and smooth his beak was.

It was three of them. The first one had hair growing from his face, and his eyes were hidden behind metal, and something that looked like miniature sky-holes; instead of being clear like sky-holes, however, his were tinted a deep red. If only he knew how frightening that shade was to the Thunderbird. . .

On second thought, it was probably for the better. He could start dressing himself in red.

The second one was much larger than the first, and all of his hair was on his head. His clothes were as dark as the caverns that haunted his first memories; but the darkness of his apparel hardly felt like home. In his hand he carried a large stick, with something heavy on the end of it. There was redness on the end of it, too - a wet redness, not unlike the redness on the ground.

The third was in an unnatural position - the other two were dragging him by his feet. The Thunderbird peered, and then realized that the wet redness was following the third Upright.

It was /coming/ from him.

". . .You think he was the one that let the others get away?" The Bearded One said this, the darkness of his face-hair made more unnatural by the brightness of his blue eyes. He gave the third Upright a sharp kick as he said this; but he remained silent.

"If that's the case, all the stories must've been an exaggeration," the Large One replied. "You'd have thought he wanted himself to get caught - there ain't no way he brought down Big Mike's trafficking scheme."

"Or O'Flaherty's run back in Calcutta - they said he kept all those Occamies in his coat," mused the Bearded One in return, before giving a snort. "Well, we need not worry now. Dump him in with the last Thunderbird; give him a good last meal before we pluck him."

The Large One slung the third Upright over his shoulder; it was now that the Thunderbird saw how easily he lost to the other two. He was rather thin - although, rather tall.

The poor Thunderbird had been hurt so much, he dared not make a move when the pair opened his cage. With a startling 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘨, the third Upright was slammed into the metallic bars, the door promptly slamming shut afterward. "Eat up," called the Large One as he walked away. "It'll be the last meal you'll ever have." With a shared snicker, the pair resumed their banter as they slipped out of the 'wayrhows'.

The Thunderbird peered at the third Upright. . . was it even alive?

On the one hand, he had never tried eating an Upright; the few he'd known throughout his time in the desert had been rather kind. Still. . . having been reminded of his hunger, the knot in his stomach tempted him to approach.

With a great rushing of feathers, the Thunderbird changed his mind, cowering with a whimper in the corner of his cage. The third Upright was alive - it had /moved/.

After what seemed like an eternity, the Thunderbird opened an eye. The third Upright was in his own corner, but he was reaching out to him. In his hand was a little bag. Emptying the contents into his hand, he revealed an assortment of grasses, little meats, and little pellets; he could not see the third Upright's eyes, but despite the blood, he was giving the Thunderbird a smile.

With complete silence, the third Upright leaned forward, and placed the offering before the creature. Retreating into his corner, he began to remove his outer shroud. As he ate, the Thunderbird watched the Upright curiously. He was carrying a kind of box - having just taken it out of his overcoat - rifling through it silently. Giving a small shrug, the Thunderbird looked backed down to his food, continuing to tuck in.

He looked back up, somewhat desperately hoping that the Upright would offer him something else to eat. . . only to find him gone.

Was he dreaming? Had he accidentally sat upon the Upright? Frantically turning as much as he could, he looked back to the spot where the Upright had vanished. . . only to see him, stepping /out/ of his box. He was clean, now, and had bandages wrapped around his forehead and his hands.

He was carrying a bottle with something inside. . . something blue. Blue like the sky-- like the Life Giver.

"Are you hurting?"

It was the first time the Upright had spoken; his voice was gentle, inviting. The Thunderbird paused, unsure how to answer in a way that would be meaningful to the Upright, rumbled a low squawk in reply. By now, the Upright had approached, hands gently raised. One hand gently moved in, stroking the feathered neck of the Thunderbird, as he began to apply some of the blue salve from the bottle to a wound underneath his eye. This was a cycle he continued several times over across the Thunderbird's body, treating each of the newer, untreated wounds with the solution.

The Thunderbird watched with further curiosity - by now, any apprehension had melted away - as the Upright produced a thin, straight piece of wood; with a light bounce of the wood and a quiet murmur from the Upright's lips, the wounds began to glow, the salve sinking into the irritated and infected bruises and gashes, healing the skin completely. Had there not been an absence of feathers in the area of the injuries, one wouldn't have known that the Thunderbird had been subjected to such cruelty.

There were, of course, some exceptions. The larger and older scars - including the more prominent one on his beak - remained. For now, though, the disfigurement of his beak barely crossed the creature's mind; he felt better than he had in a long, long time. With another gentle stroke from the Upright, the Thunderbird gave a cheerful kind of chirp.

The Upright's eyes met his; although they were blue, they were unlike the unnatural blue of the Bearded One. They were much more natural - what he'd always imagined the Life Giver to look like—

It suddenly dawned on the Thunderbird that between the deep blue eyes and the bright, fiery-golden coppery tones of his hair, that he was reminiscent of the legend his mother had often shared with him. He noticed, too, the deep blue of the Upright's overcoat. Could it possibly have been. . ?

The Thunderbird registered that he was being spoken to. Something about a name?

"Do you have a name?"

The great creature blinked. Here was an Upright talking to something that he knew (or ought to have known) very well could not reply in the same language; what kind of response was he expecting? And yet. . . he'd been so kind. It'd be rude not to reply somehow.

Even if he didn't get the answer he'd like.

The Thunderbird gave a kind of low squawk. It was the same that his mother used to summon him for dinner; the same that his siblings beckoned and teased him with when they played among the Mesas. Watching the face of the Upright before him, the Thunderbird didn't perceive any kind of confusion or misunderstanding. To the contrary, it looked as if he had been introduced to someone he was already taking a great liking to.

"Well, Frank, it is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Newt."

Frank.

Somehow, despite the difference in tongue - the fact that, as things currently stood, they had no right to understand one another at all - the Thunderbird recognized his own name in that word. It was as if the call of his mother and the kind word of the Upright were the very same thing, melded into one, universally recognizable word.

With another gentle stroke along his beak, the Upright— that is, Newt— met his eyes once more.

"I think we ought to attempt some kind of escape."

With a nod of agreement, Frank the Thunderbird raised his head. With a companion, he was suddenly growing much more confident. Newt moved across the floor to his case, and opened it. It suddenly became clear to Frank that this was no ordinary box; even by the standards of the Uprights, this seemed to be a very odd one. The interior of the Upright's box expanded much further than it should have - and yet, it was not going into the floor of the wayrhows, given that Newt was holding it off the floor.

"If you come in here," Newt explained, "I can slide my case through the bars. Then you can lift the lid off of the cage."

Had anyone else been present, they might have thought it insane that Newt was hoping the Thunderbird grasped the intricacies of this plan. Yet Frank understood it wholly, save for one aspect - that being how he was to fit into the box— the 'cais', as Newt called it.

Guiding the Thunderbird gently toward the case, it seemed to the creature as if he'd been standing outside the case at one moment, his foot poised to be lowered into the opening, and then entirely within it the next. This 'Newt' creature, kind as he was, certainly seemed to have a lot of surprises.

A rushing sound filled the head of the Thunderbird, and he sensed that the case was being moved. Prodding open the lid of the case, he found himself outside the cage. After that, it was fairly quick work; using his beak to lift the top of the cage from the bars, Frank lowered his head and allowed Newt to scramble on.

Running across the great warehouse hall, Newt opened the large rolling door. Hands on his hips, he turned to Frank, giving a gentle smile.

"There's a place for you down there, Frank. Your siblings— I've been fortunate to make their acquaintance. They're in a nice place called Arizona, much like your old home." Opening the case, he gave a small wave of his hand.

"Until then. . . you'll find a space down here just for you."

The Thunderbird began to feel tears prick at the edges of his eyes.

—

In his later years, Frank would recall the generosity of the Upright to his siblings and his own children, and he realized that his mother's legends had not been wrong. To the contrary, in a certain sense she'd been exactly right - after the greatest Thunderbird he'd ever known had left him, a Life Giver (shrouded in a large blue 'expanse' of a coat) had come to his aid. Frank and his siblings, it turned out, had not been the only Thunderbirds aided by the Life Giver known as Newt; as a consequences, all the Thunderbirds of Arizona (and eventually beyond) would grow up learning about the Life Giver, and how he'd saved them from near extermination.

To Frank, however, he was much more than the Life Giver of his mother's legends.

No, to Frank, he was just as dear as his mother - to him, Newt— 'Mummy', as he was prone to call himself— was his mother's way of protecting him.

Frank wasn't the only creature that had such kindness extended to him by the Magizoologist; but it may very well be said that Frank was among the most grateful, and always one of the most in awe of his friend.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published this on Twitter but decided to bring this here! I wanted something somewhat angsty, but with a hopeful resolution. Newt Scamander is one of my all time favorites (of any fictional work) and one dear to my heart, and I wanted something with him on the ropes, too. 
> 
> One aspect of his creature-work I've always been fascinated by is when it comes to Frank, or other creatures that have been explicitly identified as being endangered; given that Frank was being trafficked, I always wondered how his rescue went, and if Newt himself might have been in any substantial danger. I also enjoyed the idea of different creatures having their own kinds of cultures and mythos - and if anyone would be able to tap into that, I feel that Newt could.
> 
> Hope this was enjoyed!
> 
> Please, please, please - feel free to leave feedback! It'd really be appreciated! :D


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